Chapter 7 - Infiltrating Vale Enterprises
The corporate headquarters of Vale Enterprises sat on the Charleston harbor, a massive, gleaming tower of tinted glass and steel. At 6:00 AM, the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, painting the water in shades of bruised purple and orange.
The building was mostly empty, save for the early-morning cleaning staff and a single security guard at the front desk.
I didn't use the front doors. I knew the building's layout; my father had made me memorize the blueprints when I was a teenager during my brief stint as an intern. I bypassed the main lobby and headed for the underground parking garage.
Using a fire axe I pulled from an emergency station near the loading dock, I pried open the electrical maintenance door. Within minutes, I was inside the service elevator, riding it up to the executive penthouse suite on the 40th floor.
The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open to reveal my father’s personal office. It was a vast room with panoramic views of the ocean.
I didn't waste time looking at the view. I walked straight to his heavy mahogany desk and sat in his leather chair. I booted up his terminal. It required a biometric scan and a high-level password.
I pulled out a small black flash drive I had taken from Julian’s pocket after I knocked him down the night before. Julian was sloppy. He always kept an encrypted master-key override token on his keychain in case he forgot his passwords. I slotted the drive into the port.
The screen flashed red, then green. Access Granted.
I brought up the financial ledgers for Standard Oceanic Corp. My fingers flew across the keyboard, downloading years of transaction history, hidden routing numbers, and encrypted communications.
And there it was.
A series of encrypted emails dated two weeks before my deployment. The sender was my father’s private account. The recipient was an encrypted address routed through a proxy server in Mogadishu.
The attachment was a PDF file labeled: US Military Flight Path Manifest - Sector 4.
My eyes filled with hot, angry tears as I read the text of the email.
The cargo will be in the air on the 14th. Ensure the wreckage is total. No survivors. The insurance payout will settle our balance.
He had sold us out. He had signed my death warrant before I ever left American soil. He didn't care that his own daughter was on that helicopter; to him, I was just a liability with a high-value payout.
"Looking for something, Maren?"
I froze. I slowly closed the laptop and looked up.
May you like
My father was standing in the doorway of the office. He wasn't wearing his tuxedo anymore. He looked disheveled, his hair wild, a heavy silver revolver gripped in his right hand. Behind him stood two burly men in dark suits—hired corporate muscle.
"You should have stayed dead, Maren," my father said, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of fear and malice. "It would have been so much easier for everyone."
